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Fort Smith Chamber Celebrates 125 Years Of Making Business Happen

Fort Smith Chamber Celebrates 125 Years Of Making Business Happen

Photo Courtesy of Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce / A group of people gather in line in front of the former Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce office in this circa 1960 photo being researched by former Chamber Vice President Janie Glover as part of a forthcoming exhibit on the chamber's 125th anniversary. Public input is sought about the photograph.

Fort Smith Chamber Celebrates 125 Years Of Making Business Happen

Rachel Rodemann • Times Record / Janie Glover with the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce, right, and Leisa Gramlich with the Fort Smith Museum of History discuss ways to preserve, protect and display photos and documents ahead of the Chamber's 125th anniversary celebration, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, at the Chamber offices in downtown Fort Smith.

Fort Smith Chamber Celebrates 125 Years Of Making Business Happen

Rachel Rodemann • Times Record / Janie Glover with the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce, right, and Leisa Gramlich with the Fort Smith Museum of History discuss ways to preserve, protect and display photos and documents ahead of the Chamber's 125th anniversary celebration, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, at the Chamber offices in downtown Fort Smith.

The streets of Fort Smith were still wagon-rutted mud and dirt, and Judge Isaac Parker’s court ruled the land when a group of businessmen came together on Nov. 14, 1887, to form the Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce.

In the 125 years since that first meeting, the chamber has remained a privately funded organization with the same objective: Bring in business, and keep it happy.

One of the first items of business was to take care of some dirty business. Chamber members raised money to put in the first sewer lines downtown. There was no formal city government to take care of this kind of thing, says Janie Glover, a former chamber vice president and de facto chamber historian.

According to an 1887 edition of the Fort Smith Elevator newspaper Glover shows, the first chamber board of directors consisted of 10 men who met every Friday. In that first year, in addition to getting sewer and street work started, they formed a “factory fund” to bring a furniture factory to Fort Smith. They sent a man out on a tour of “investigation and observation through the eastern states to publicize Fort Smith and Arkansas.” Not long later, the McLoud Sparks Company began making furniture in Fort Smith, followed by the Ward Factory.

Over the course of its early years, the chamber was also known as the Commercial League, the Commercial Club, the Businessmen’s Club and finally full circle back to the Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce again in 1922 when the 487 paying members of the club reorganized to include other local trade and commercial organizations.

In 1903, as the Commercial Club, it incorporated with $50,000 “to develop the City of Fort Smith and make a profit for the stockholders.” At least 100 active members sponsored an exhibit at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, also known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition for the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. It hadn’t been that long before, in 1892, when “the first bridge over the Arkansas River was built due to the urgings of the Chamber of Commerce,” a 1968 history of the chamber says.

The Commercial Club built natural gas lines, installed electric street car system to replace mule drawn vehicles, built a modern hotel, and a bridge over the Arkansas River to Van Buren. It also paved many city streets and financed construction of 12 cottages to be used by employees of the wagon factory.

The Arkansas-Oklahoma Rodeo is also a piece of price in the chamber’s past, having helped support the American Legion Rodeo in 1920. One of the top 10 rodeos in the nation for a long time, it came under sponsorship of the chamber in 1934. Glover, who first joined the chamber in the 1960s, helped organize the rodeo for many years. She also saw the construction of Interstate 40 through Fort Smith during her time with the chamber.

Billy Dooly, president of the chamber from 1990 to 2003, has been a driving force in shaping another major national thoroughfare in Fort Smith: Interstate 49. Even 10 years after retiring from his post at the chamber, the former Army helicopter pilot meets monthly with others in a coalition to keep the project on course.

“The skies the limit as far as Fort Smith and the region is concerned,” Dooly said. “We just need to bring everyone to the table, from the finance, and manufacturing, medical and education sectors.”

As pointed out in the chamber’s theme of this 125th anniversary, the border town has grown from a “Fort to a Corporate City.”

Tim Allen, the current chamber president, noted that the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce is the chamber of commerce in the state that does not receive state tax dollars, and has always remained a private entity to allow it more flexibility. The chamber has its own Economic Development Fund, with more than 250 contributing businesses helping bring more business to Fort Smith.

“They get it,” Allen said of the local businesses that contribute to the fund. “They know they’re pitching in to make a bigger slice of the pie.”

The chamber also serves as a conduit for the Governor’s Quick Action Fund, and the Arkansas Department of Economic Development.

“I think we forget just how many great world-class companies are here in Fort Smith because we drive by them all the time,” Allen said. “But if you look at all these shovels in the chamber office, it tells a remarkable story.”

For several months, Glover has combed the archives, an old bank vault, and pulled dozens of documents and photos in preparation for an exhibit Nov. 5 at the Fort Smith Convention Center as part of the chamber’s 125th anniversary celebration.

In her dusty trek though time, Glover has uncovered one photograph that has piqued her curiosity.

In what appears to be circa 1960, people are lined up outside the former chamber office downtown. There is no information on the back of the photo to give her a clue as to why. She has asked many, but no one knows what exactly the event could be. Most of the people are wearing long coats, and from the long shadow of a parked car on the north side of Garrison Avenue downtown, it was taken in the morning. The building at 613 Garrison Ave., is now inhabited by R. Landry’s New Orleans Cafe. Those with clues may reach Glover at the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce office, 612 Garrison Ave., by calling (479) 783-6118.